


Tales of Lethbridge-Stewart: What could have been

by Pearlislove



Series: Kate Stewart Appreciation Week 2017 [4]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-02-03 01:36:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12738366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pearlislove/pseuds/Pearlislove
Summary: What if Colonel Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart never met the second Doctor?





	Tales of Lethbridge-Stewart: What could have been

**Author's Note:**

> Kate Stewart Appreciation Week day 4
> 
> Theme: AU
> 
>  
> 
> A little what if for what could have been, had The Brigadier never met The Doctor.

Sometimes, Kate wonders what she would have become without UNIT. She looks at finally photos and she thinks, trying not cry as the thoughts close up around her and make her heart hammer in her chest, each breath more difficult than the last.   
  
She looks at the photos, from her childhood, and she thinks.   
  
She sees her father dropping her in the ocean on a beach somewhere when she was three, and she sees Christmas at her grandmother's house when she was two.    
  
She sees her fifth birthday party without her father, and she thinks of how UNIT broke apart her family.   
  
She looks at the pictures of her children's childhood, and she thinks some more.   
  
She sees Jonathan with her in the hospital when Gordon was born, and Tom by her side when they came home with Fiona. Birthday party and happy laughter, except there's so much missing. In the early photos, those with just her and Gordon, she's always there.   
  
But when the camera shows Fiona she is missing more and more and it hurts, because she thinks that maybe UNIT broke apart this family, too.   
  
It scares her to think of such things, but sometimes she can't help but wonder what could have been, had the aliens never made their way into their lives .   
  
\---   
  
Somewhere far away, in a parallel Universe, Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart never met The Doctor. He was homesick and missed all that happened, only hearing of the happenings in vague detail later on, thinking he surely dodged a bullet.   
  
In this world, everything changed, and there's no telling if it was for better or worse.   
  
Alistair and Fiona Lethbridge-Stewart never split up, and Doris Wilson never got to remarry, remaining a childless widow for the rest of her life.   
  
At twenty-one years old, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart gave birth to Gordon James Lethbridge-Stewart, the son of her and her husband Jonathan, which she married a year later to the day.   
  
They're a peaceful family living in Shoreditch, with Kate being a Maths teacher and Jonathan an electrician. Nothing could better.   
  
When Kate is thirty one Fiona Mary Lethbridge-Stewart is born, a long wished for sibling to the couple's first son, and also she gets to grow up in the Lethbridge-Stewart household.   
  
Like everyone else, the little family meet aliens. They see space ships crashing into the Big Ben and there is a remarkable election where everyone votes for the same candidate. Yet, they are still sceptic to calling it extraterrestrial, because why would they? In their world, aliens were not real.   
  
When Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart is twenty-two, he joins the army. His mother and father are sceptic, his grandfather understanding and proud, and in the end the family decides to back up their boy in his decisions.   
  
Thirty years old, Gordon is recruited at UNIT. His very first task given to him is to clean up in the archives, organizing files that were transported from earlier bases of operation but were never taken care of.   
  
It's loads and loads of dusty boxes with dusty paper files, but Gordon has been taught to make do is what has been given, and sets about it, soon joined by another five new recruits.   
  
Five days later, he comes across a file, detailing the circumstances that lead to the founding of UNIT in 1968. Back then, his mother was three years old and his grandfather in active military service. The curiosity and want to find out what it was all about is strong, and in the end he sits down to read it on his lunch break.   
  
It talks about a military attack, and about Yetis roaming around the London underground. In the side notes, he read the Colonel leading the attacks and first making contact with 'The Doctor'-which had been known to England since late 16th Century - was a stand in for another Colonel, who'd fallen sick at the time.   
  
The name of the colonel who should have been there, is Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, and Gordon shudders.   
  
Staring down at the name of his grandfather, a man who should have been there to see the aliens by never were, something feels wrong. Somewhere deep down in his subconscious, he can feel the crack in space and time, and he knows, that this is not how it should have been.   
  
  
  



End file.
